


One Sweet Kiss

by Oshun



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-16
Updated: 2012-07-16
Packaged: 2017-11-10 02:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oshun/pseuds/Oshun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Maryrenaultfics LJ community “Spring Jumble Sale” (2012) challenge. It refers to Laurie's brief friendship with Charles Fortescue at university. </p><p>The community's writers provided snippets from neglected or abandoned work that were sitting on their hard-drives to the community as prompts for use in creating stories. The prompts I used were submitted anonymously. I am most grateful to the original author. (See actual prompt in the endnote.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Sweet Kiss

Laurie had known for a long time that Charles intended to kiss him. He had assumed that it was inevitable, but he was not ready to make it easier yet. With his finely honed sense of manipulation and cunning, Charles really did not need any help. Still Laurie wanted to know how it would feel to be properly kissed.  
  
Perhaps, sooner or later, he would turn his head to Charles and look, letting him know by his gaze that he was ready. Or, he could simply fail to move the next time that Charles leaned forward. The only thing that had prevented either of those situations from happening already was Laurie’s over-developed sense of self-protection and an almost certainly inappropriate loyalty to a fallen idol.  At the almost unconscious furthermost reaches of his mind, there lived a dream, a wish, an impossible hope of what might have been, could have been, if someone else had been his first.  
  
There was no question that Charles was handsome, although florid from drink rather than bronzed by the sun. His hair shone as sleek and dark as a raven’s wing, not golden as a spring morning’s light on a field of buttercups. If avoiding a kiss was going to result in the production of such unbearable pseudo-poetic tripe, then he had best pucker up and endure one--a big sloppy wet one--like a man. The idea made Laurie giggle and choke.  
  
Charles raised his eyebrows, “Are you alright?”  
  
“Mm, fine. Good. Never better.”  
  
Laurie lifted the nearest wine bottle and studied it with the persistence and concentration of the inebriated. He sniffed the bottle. It was becoming damned difficult to focus. That one—the heavy Spanish red—was long dead. Where was the other? The lighter, drier Italian one. _Ah, there it is_ , he thought, almost knocking over his wine glass to grab it. He held the green bottle up to the lamp. _Three-quarters gone_ , he mused, wondering if it were the last.  
  
“I say, dear Charles, if you are going to kiss me tonight, I reckon you had best get on with it before I pass out.”  
  
“Is that what you want?” Charles asked, eyes widening, voice softer than usual. “A kiss, I mean?”  
  
His attempt to sound both unconcerned and surprised was as transparent as a glass of water to Laurie. Even a drunk could perceive the falseness of that. Without looking into his gimlet grey eyes, Laurie smiled knowing that Charles was dying to pounce. He spent the last month forever busy plotting and planning, the object of which was how to get into Laurie’s trousers. Laurie never had any intention of being coy; he simply had not been sure up to that point of what it was he wanted. There had been no need for urgency. Charles was always available, intelligent if somewhat shallow, attractive and keen, ardent and generous, in his own limited way.  
  
His hand felt surprisingly soft against the sliver of bare skin between the hair on the back of Laurie’s neck and the collar of his shirt. The pressure of Charles’ hand pushing their faces closer was not at first perceptible. Finally, Laurie became aware that their game had reached the point again where he had always before pulled back. Instead, Laurie dipped forward.  
  
The beginning of the kiss was far lovelier than Laurie had expected and yet less than he had hoped, less than the momentary brushing of lips that he had received from Lanyon the day that he left school. He had tried to help Charles, but his sudden lurch forward only made the kiss turn from sweet to awkward, causing Laurie to jerk away confused and detached, aroused but still indifferent in a way he could never have been with Lanyon.  
  
“You hadn't done that before, had you?" asked Charles with a tone of faint surprise.  
  
"No, I hadn't," replied Laurie, wondering if he ought to have done it now, if that was all it was.  
  
"Not even at school?" Charles asked.  
  
Laurie wondered if he should even mention that briefest of kisses in the prefect’s study. Lanyon had given him the opportunity to deepen that kiss and Laurie had pulled back, too young, too stupid, too lacking in self-knowledge, and too startled, if the bare truth be told, to press his advantage.  
  
He would have traded Charles’ kiss one hundred times over for a chance to do over that moment in time. He could never explain that to Charles. At best he could hurt him, at worst Charles might laugh, and, in any case, it would somehow be a betrayal of Lanyon, his first love. _Alcohol makes me ridiculous_ , he thought, _outrageously so_.  
  
"Hadn't the chance,” Laurie stuttered. “We had a bit of a scandal, you see."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
Having started, Laurie found himself curiously reluctant to continue, but he knew that Charles would compel the details from him eventually.  
  
"My housemaster was the suspicious sort," he said. "We had an inquisition and our Head Boy was expelled."  
  
Charles sucked in air through his teeth. "How horrible. MY school was simply filthy, my dear. Everyone was screwing, most of the students at any rate, and a good few of the teachers gave aid and comfort if you knew where to look. This Head Boy of yours--was he so, or just dabbling?"  
  
“No. He wasn’t dabbling.”  
  
Laurie suddenly felt both sober and annoyed. He thought that the Lanyon he knew was capable of astonishing lapses in judgment, but he never dabbled in anything. He wished that someday he could see Lanyon again, ask him if he had felt the same pull, explain how he had wanted more from that almost kiss. He would tell Lanyon he had misunderstood him. It had not been too much for him, it had only been a beautiful surprise.  
  
Of course, he would have to ask Lanyon what on God’s green earth he had been thinking to have allowed himself to take up with the likes of Hazell—a ferrety, whinging little snitch hiding behind the face of Hadrian’s Antinous. Perhaps Hazell’s pathological personality disorders had been more apparent to his peers than they had been to Head Boy Lanyon. After Laurie’s initial shock had worn off, he often imagined Lanyon had been trying to somehow help the hopeless prat. What a predictably disastrous business that had turned out to be, but Lanyon had been only a boy himself at the time. An opportunity to know Lanyon better wasn’t likely to present itself. Expelled. Gone. Disappeared. Lost forever.  
  
Laurie thought he might kiss Charles again and see where that led him. But he already felt disenchanted. He did not believe he was the type, like Charles, who could pursue the sensation without the emotional connection. Charles was a realist, whilst he was a dreamer, ever chasing the ideal and unattainable, afraid to settle for only the good. But, it was only fair to Charles and to himself to experiment a little and, anyway, he was deliciously tipsy. He suspected he’d missed the moment with Lanyon and moments like that were never repeated, that was made clear in all the books, plays and poems. If he ever had another such opportunity he would take it seriously indeed. Meanwhile, he might permit Charles another kiss.  
  
FIN

**Author's Note:**

> "Hadn't the chance. We had a bit of a scandal, you see."
> 
> "Oh?"
> 
> Having started, Laurie found himself curiously reluctant to continue, but he knew that Charles would compel the details from him eventually.
> 
> "My housemaster was the suspicious sort," he said. "We had an inquisition and our Head Boy was expelled."
> 
> Charles sucked in air through his teeth. "How horrible. MY school was simply filthy, my dear. Everyone was screwing, most of the students at any rate, and a good few of the teachers gave aid and comfort if you knew where to look. This Head Boy of yours--was he so, or just dabbling?"


End file.
